The purpose of the device of this invention is to overcome the strange effects of bridging and rat-holing, normally encountered in conventional gravity-fed bins when handling particulate materials such as woodchips, wood blocks or briquettes that vary in size. The flow of material from such a normal device is usually out from the bottom, but even if the material flows out at the top, it spills down toward the bottom, and the particles tend to bridge over themselves in such a way as to prevent further flow. The flow of material from the device of this invention is not solely dependent on gravity, because the material has no opportunity to bridge or otherwise become obstructed in flowing from the bin to a delivery apparatus, such as an auger or a conveyor down at the bottom of the main bin. Bridging and rat-holing have been found to be extremely problematical when such materials as irregularly sized wood chips, especially moist wood chips, are delivered into combustion reactors, such as furnaces. Other materials also exhibit this type of behavior.
An object of the invention is to provide satisfactory feeding of wood chips, whether dry or moist, wooden blocks or pieces of various sizes, briquettes and so on; so that they can be fed properly from the storage device to a combustion reactor or furnace. The device eliminates a number of obstacles that impede the operation of small scale automatically controlled systems for handling biomass and other materials.